


The Noble Lie

by Philosopher_King



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Family Feels, Family Issues, Frigga Feels, Gen, Loki is Offscreen, Loki-centric, Odin feels, Odin's B+ Parenting, Other People Talking About Loki, Parents Being Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 22:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6629869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'You would not truly have killed him, had I not pleaded with you to be merciful,' Frigga said.  There was uncertainty in her voice, and the beginnings of anger."  After Loki's sentencing, Frigga confronts Odin about his words to Loki, he offers an unexpected explanation, and they discuss their sons' past and future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Noble Lie

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm not at all sure I'm committed to this explanation of Odin's behavior in _The Dark World,_ or of his claim that both Thor and Loki were born to be kings, but the ideas occurred to me and I thought they were worth dramatizing.

When Odin emerged from the audience chamber into the small study behind it, trembling with grief and weariness and leaning on Gungnir as if it were more a staff than a spear, he was not surprised to find Frigga waiting for him just outside the door.

“You would not truly have killed him, had I not pleaded with you to be merciful,” Frigga said.  There was uncertainty in her voice, and the beginnings of anger.

Odin shook his head.  “If I had truly thought it was best for the Realms… I do not know.  I do not know if I would have had the strength.”

“Or the callousness?” Frigga bit back.

Odin sighed and closed his eye for a moment.  “Or that,” he acknowledged, meeting her flashing gaze once more.  “I thank the Norns that I did not have to find out.”

“Then why did you tell him that?” Frigga asked, distress plainly mixed with her confusion.  “That you would have had him killed, if not for my wishes?  Or that—” her voice cracked slightly as it rose—“that ‘his birthright was to die’?  It seems you had callousness enough for that.”

“Yes,” Odin said simply, allowing her to hear his pain in his voice.

“Why?” Frigga asked again, insistent.

Odin did not answer immediately, but began to walk slowly toward his desk, and sat down heavily in the leather-cushioned chair behind it.  Frigga followed him, matching his slow pace but practically vibrating with her anxious energy.  When he looked up at her across the desk, her eyes were still blazing with anger, and gleaming with unshed tears.

“I have to let him believe that I do not love him,” Odin said at last, dully.

 _“What?”_ Frigga was shocked, horrified.  “Odin, no, you must—”

Odin held up his hand, and she stopped short.  “Please, listen,” he said, almost plaintive.  “He already believes that I do not love him.  He has suspected it most of his life, though I think he fought against it, and struggled not to believe it; but the suspicion was strengthened almost to belief the day he found out about his birth, and he became all but certain of it when—when he fell.”  Odin’s voice broke on the last phrase.  “And that is my fault.  I can blame no one but myself.”

Frigga shook her head in disbelief.  “But he is wrong.  You cannot let him go on believing it when it isn’t true.”

The clear blue of Odin’s one eye made his grief seem to shine through his gaze like a steel blade.  “It’s never as simple as that.  In this case, I must let him go on believing it _because_ it isn’t true.  Don’t you see?  If I keep trying to show him that I _do_ love him, in spite of everything, he still will not believe it; he will keep testing it, keep pushing me to see how much I truly love him, how far he can go before I stop loving him.  He will keep throwing himself against the bulwark of my love until it breaks, or he does.  To protect Asgard and all the Realms—and, the Norns know, to protect him—I cannot let him do that.  Here: I have broken his heart once, cleanly—or as cleanly as a heart can be broken—so that he will not bruise and maim and eventually shatter it, over centuries.”

Tears were streaming silently down Frigga’s face as he spoke; her shoulders convulsed once, with the force of the sobs she had been suppressing.  “It can’t be worth it,” she whispered.

Odin closed his eye, pressed his lips tightly together, and rocked slightly forward, as if pushed down by the weight of his grief.  “I do not think I have understood until now the meaning of the adage that to love something is to be able to let it go.”

“To let him believe you do not love him,” Frigga said hoarsely, still struggling to grasp it.  “To let him hate you for it.”

“Yes,” Odin said softly.  “But he must know that _you_ still love him, and he must go on loving you,” he went on, his voice stronger, an undercurrent of urgency in his tone.

Slowly, Frigga lowered herself into the chair that faced Odin’s across the desk.  “Why do you say that?”

“Because he must believe that there is still something—someone—for him in Asgard.”  Odin’s piercing blue gaze met Frigga’s firmly.  “There will come a day when Thor will need him.”

Frigga’s mouth quirked, and she exhaled a (mostly) humorless laugh through her nose.  “Yes, _I_ know that, for I have seen it in the threads; but how do _you_ know?”

Odin returned her half-smile.  “Because we raised them that way, as I’m sure you recall.  And I don’t just mean that Thor will need him as a brother and a friend—though surely he will—”

“Thor _is_ your son,” Frigga cut in, her voice wry.  “He would honor your decrees, even after you are gone, out of loyalty to you; and he can resist his own needs out of stubbornness quite as well as you can—the needs of his body _and_ the needs of his heart.”

“True enough,” said Odin, sounding just a little abashed (as was proper).  “But no: I meant that Thor will need his counsel, his aid in ruling.  While bringing them up, we allowed their differences to take deep root and flourish.  And perhaps we did Loki a disservice: most of his peers—most of Asgard, in truth—did not see the value of his talents, while they showered praise and honor on Thor; and I fear he thought that I viewed things the same way.”

“Perhaps we did both of them a disservice,” Frigga remarked.  “Surely Thor would have benefited from a bit more foresight and caution, from the discipline of the mind as well as the body.”

“Yes,” Odin agreed.  “And that is why Thor will need Loki.  Thor is too rash, and will need Loki’s caution; Thor is too quick to trust, and will need Loki’s suspicion; Thor is too generous, too forgiving, and will need Loki’s ability to be cold and ruthless.  Thor thinks with his heart; he will need someone who genuinely thinks with his mind.  His vast, curious, nimble, powerful mind.”

“But we thought they would always be together,” Frigga said gently.  “That each would always be there to balance the other.”

“And so they must be,” Odin affirmed.

Frigga raised her eyebrows.  “Oh?”

“Thor will release Loki, years after I am dead,” Odin said matter-of-factly.  “For good behavior, and conditional on continued good behavior.  But this can only happen _if Loki does not do anything stupid.”_ He fixed Frigga with a meaningful stare.

Frigga laughed, a little sadly.  “I will do my best to steady him.  But I fear… I fear we cannot right the ship as easily as that.  All the lines are tangled, love, and storms are coming that we can only dimly see.”

“You have seen this, too, in the threads?” Odin asked, his brow furrowed with consternation.

Frigga looked down at her fingers, drumming lightly on the desk, and considered how to answer.  “It is hard to know what I have seen, and harder still to say,” she said slowly.  “I have seen that Thor will need his brother, and will be somehow unable to reach him.  Whether it is a physical barrier or a spiritual one, and whether or not it is an obstacle he can overcome—that I do not know.”

Weary and worried, Odin swiped a hand over his face.  “They were meant to rule together,” he insisted, though he was not sure whom the protestation was aimed at.  “True, there cannot be two kings, but—many Midgardian governments, these days, have two leaders, often called the _president_ and the _prime minister._ A head of state and a head of government.  A unifying, charismatic leader, whom all the people can rally behind, who ratifies the decisions of the government; and a sometimes divisive leader, the one who makes the difficult decisions, who works out the ugly bargains in secret rooms.”

Frigga pressed her lips together, weighing her words.  “In some ways, they are well-suited to that: Thor to be the _president,_ as the Midgardians call it, and Loki to be the prime minister.  But what you didn’t count on, it seems, is that Loki is not content simply to be respected and feared; he, too, wishes to be loved.”  She paused.  “Or he did.  Perhaps that has changed now.  But perhaps it has not changed in a way that we would want.”

Odin shook his head, looking frustrated, half-irritable.  “Thor loves him with all his heart—all of that absurd, impossible heart, as vast, powerful, and inexhaustible as his brother’s mind.  Shouldn’t that be enough for anyone?”

Frigga’s laugh was brittle.  “But Loki’s heart is as hungry as his mind.  No amount of love or knowledge would ever be enough.”

A frown creased Odin’s brow.  “As hungry as he was when I found him that day, on the altar of ice… It is cruel and unfair that those so young and helpless should be so vulnerable.  Did those first few days he spent in hunger condemn him to be hungry his whole life?”

“Yes,” Frigga said quietly.

Odin looked surprised.  “Did your weaving tell you that as well?”

Frigga raised her eyebrows.  “I do know a thing or two about early childhood development.”

“Of course,” Odin said.

They sat in silence for a while, staring past each other, lost in their thoughts.  “Do you want a drink?” Odin said abruptly.

“Oh, yes,” Frigga said emphatically.

Odin levered himself to his feet, went to the cabinet against the wall, and pulled out a carved crystal bottle of brandy and two small silver goblets.  He poured them each a cupful and they drained them quickly, then he poured two more cupfuls.

“Of course, Loki would be furious if he knew that you were lying to him ‘for his own good,’” Frigga remarked with a small smile over her cup of brandy.

“He would do the very same thing,” Odin pointed out.  “If it were Thor—if he thought he could protect Thor by convincing him he didn’t love him, by making Thor hate him, he would do it without question.  Though it broke his heart, he would do it.”

“The _noble lie,_ yes,” Frigga said, with a note of amusement in her voice.  Odin was puzzled by the expression, but did not inquire.  “He would not hesitate to tell one; but neither would he react well to being the target of the deception.”

“Even if it might bring him some kind of peace?” Odin asked quietly, looking down into his brandy.

Frigga shook her head, her eyes shining with regret.  “He would demand the truth and beg you to lie in the same breath,” she said, her voice aching.  “He would plead for the lie with his lips and for the truth with his eyes.”  Her tiny smile now had only sorrow in it.  “Or perhaps the other way around.”

Odin tapped the bottom of his cup on the desk lightly, considering.  “Perhaps you should tell him the truth someday, when he’s… calmed down somewhat.  After I’m gone, of course.”

Frigga snorted softly.  “Or perhaps Thor should.  Very likely we’ll both be dead by the time he’s calm enough for that.”

“We will be leaving Thor with a heavy burden,” Odin said.  “Not only this one task, but—the task of piecing something like a family back together, after our construction proved not to be strong enough.”  _And of piecing his brother back together,_ he added only to himself.

“Yet the source of some burdens will help him to bear others,” Frigga said gently.  “That is the essence of family, is it not?”

Odin raised his half-empty cup with a playful half-smile.  “To family,” he proposed.

“To _our_ family,” Frigga amended.  _It is still a family,_ she told herself firmly.  _It is still whole._

They both drained their cups again, and reflected on how the sweetness lingered even through the bitter aftertaste of the liquor and the burning it left in their throats.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you're wondering why Frigga makes a reference to Plato (which is also in the title): as usual for me, this fic occurs in the same universe/timeline as all the rest of my fics, and in this universe, Loki discovered some Plato in the palace library when he was in (the Asgardian equivalent of) his early teens, got really into it, probably talked Frigga's ear off about it (and Thor's, when possible), and developed a long-lasting interest in Midgardian philosophy.
> 
> If philosopher!Loki sounds interesting to you, you may enjoy reading my other fics, including [Silver and Gold](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5047336/chapters/11606062), in which Sif has an unrequited crush on Loki and he talks her ear off about Plato, too. For more Odin Family Feels, you might want to check out [Not This Day](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6015226) (between _The Dark World_ and _Age of Ultron,_ Thor reminisces to Jane about his fond memories of Loki) and [The Third Time](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4934647) (Loki dies for real this time, and has a final conversation with Thor).
> 
> Please leave comments!! Including suggestions for improvement, if any occur to you.


End file.
